Cost of “ad hoc” wafer release policies

Modern manufacturing operations must, on one hand, be very flexible in order to react to the rapidly changing market needs, and on the other hand, as cost effective as possible. The chaotic nature of the market, however, does not allow systematic minimization of manufacturing costs. This paper studies manufacturing flexibility, manufacturing cost trade-off. The analysis is performed using a simulation technique and assuming that the chaotic nature of the market can be modeled by `ad hoc´ wafer release policies